You may not realize that the World Cup tournament is currently going on in South Africa. It's like the Olympics, but without the American media. Or like the rest of the world's Super Bowl. (do I have to pay royalties to write that?) Korea's in it, and...gosh, it's hard to even mention sports without immediately sinking into a morass of cliches. World Cup fever is sweeping the nation. It means so much to this tiny country. You just can't help but get caught up in it!
Actually, that last sentence was quite literally true last night. I went with a couple of friends to City Hall Plaza, one of many sites where the game was being screened. You could tell when you were getting close because vendors of light-up devil horns started to blend together, and the line at KFC could kill your appetite if the chicken didn't. I was sorely tempted to buy a "We're 12th Player" t-shirt, but if I wore it to a Bills game, I'd just look retarded. Convenience stores had iced beer at the front door in a very efficient form of crowd control, and squid and pre-cut fruit were in abundance.
We showed up just in time for kickoff, so were relegated to the back of the crowd...fine, because the claustrophobia was intense. There were no chairs, but everyone spontaneously decided to sit down, so we all plonked down, Indian-style or criss-cross-applesauce (depending on when you grew up), right there in the street. Made me nostalgic for elementary-school assemblies. The great thing about elementary school was that you could sit there on the gym floor and watch the proceedings unaccosted, without anyone resting their leg against your back (come on people, it's 89 degrees; if you wanted to cuddle, why didn't you say so when I was hypothermic on New Year's Eve?), whacking you in the head with rigid handbags (no matter how many times you shoved the thing away), or dong-chimming you with their hooker heels (I was fortunate to be in the last row of people sitting, with the usual pushing & stiff-arming going on at my back). One couple kept letting their little flag hang in my sightline so it perfectly obscured the screen; at least I wasn't the guy 2 rows ahead who sat impassively as it covered his face time and time again. A sudden wet spot on my head turned out to be merely a passing water bottle fresh out of a cooler. I was more concerned with where the loogies were going. And God forbid someone should feel sick...the plaza was acres of devil horns with no space in between; anyone who needed to make a quick getaway simply couldn't. I lasted through the entire first half, not minding my sleeping leg so much, but in increasing agony over my jackknifed back. Finally, Korea scored as the first half died; everyone stood up to cheer, then forgot that they were ever sitting.
Just like at the baseball game I never blogged about, the Koreans expressed their enthusiasm by banging inflatable plastic tubes together, and spontaneously bursting into songs...all of which have familiar tunes, and, for that matter, familiar lyrics, since I've heard the word "Korea" before. Bet you didn't know that "Dae han min guk gloria" were the words to Beethoven's 9th.
Ultimately, they lost (to Argentina, who one of my kids told me is going to win the Cup), but we had long since started wandering the city, stopping to check in at every screen along the sidewalk, musing at the knot of people around a tiny tv in the subway station. It was a fabulous night to be outside, and I'm glad to be spending the World Cup where people care (I have a knack for this; I was in England for the festivities in '98, and even caught a good deal of the action in '06 by nannying for a soccer-crazed 11-year-old).
I skipped out on the first game, where Korea beat Greece, because it was cold and raining, but I could hear the elated screaming and the celebratory vomiting from my apartment. There's one more guaranteed game, but it's in the wee hours, so that'll be it for me unless Korea advances (which they could). Crap, it just occurred to me I'll probably still hear the screaming and vomiting for the wee hours game. Lifelong memories, these.
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